notes for authors

2.1. Research Papers

Full-length Research Papers should not normally exceed the equivalent of about 10000 words.

2.2. Short Communications

Short Communications are intended for the presentation of topics of limited scope or for preliminary announcements of novel research findings. They are not intended for interim reports of work in progress, and must report results that are of scientific value in their own right.

Short Communications should not normally exceed two journal pages (about 1500 words). They are refereed in the normal way.

2.3. Lead Articles

Lead Articles are authoritative, comprehensive and forward-looking reviews of major areas of research interest. Suggestions for suitable topics and of potential author(s) are welcomed by the Editors.

The Editors will discuss the treatment of the topic, the length of the Article and the delivery date of the article with invited author(s).

2.4. Feature Articles

Feature Articles are focused surveys covering recent advances in an area of current research. A brief introduction should provide historical perspective and a brief conclusion should indicate likely future directions. Inclusion of relevant new results is appropriate.

Feature Articles will be about ten journal pages (10000 words). Shorter articles on rapidly evolving areas are also actively encouraged.

2.5. Topical Reviews

Topical Reviews aim to capture the current trend of a field and are expected to be relatively short. Typically they should contain about 6000 words and a maximum of 50 references, with half of those having been published in the last three years.

2.6. Beamlines articles

These brief articles provide details of beamlines available to users at synchrotron and free-electron laser facilities around the world. Beamline papers should provide an overview to allow potential users to understand the beamline capabilities and sufficient details to act as an archival reference for research performed on the beamline. Where possible, beamline articles should emphasize what makes the beamline distinct from others. Articles in this category may also describe certain parts of a beamline that give it unique features, e.g. an insertion device, beamline optics, experimental station, sample environment or detector. Results of measurements at the beamline should be presented. Beamline papers are refereed in the normal way.

2.7. Computer Programs

A brief description of the purpose, strategy, computer language, machine requirements, input requirements and the type of results obtained should be included. It is also ordinarily required that the adequacy of the documentation shall have been proved by the successful use of the program by two different teams outside the author's institution. Authors would usually be expected to be those who developed the program. Computer Programs will generally be about five journal pages (5000 words). Shorter articles on both new programs or systems and significant updates to existing ones will also be considered.

2.8. Laboratory Notes

These are very brief descriptions of special devices, equipment modifications, techniques for accomplishing certain tasks etc. A simple schematic drawing may often be preferable to an actual photograph of the apparatus. These articles should not normally exceed 500 words and may be refereed.

2.9. Teaching and Education

Articles in this category cover all aspects of an educational nature related to the general field of synchrotron radiation. All contributions should be submitted to one of the Editors.

2.10. Letters to the Editor

These may deal with non-technical aspects of synchrotron radiation, its role, its propagation, the proper functions of its Societies etc. or may make a technical observation or scientific comment that would usefully be brought to a wider audience. Letters should be submitted to one of the Editors.

2.11. Scientific Commentaries

Scientific Commentaries discuss articles of particular importance for the readership of the journal. Suggestions for suitable topics and of potential author(s) are welcomed by the Main Editors.

2.12. New Commercial Products

Announcements of new commercial products are published free of charge. The descriptions, up to 300 words or the equivalent if a figure is included, should give the manufacturer's full address.

2.13. Meeting Reports

These are normally invited. Prospective authors interested in writing such items should first contact one of the Editors.

2.14. Obituaries

These will be commissioned by one of the Editors.

3.1. Submission

All submissions should be accompanied by a covering letter that explains the significance of the work reported.

Articles should be submitted at https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/submit.html. Full instructions for submitting an article and details of the files required are given at https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/submitinstructions.html. Authors are encouraged to use the templates available from https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/helpsubmit.html.

A single author (the submitting author) should handle the submission of the article and be the contact for any editorial questions during the review and publication processes. The submitting author must provide an e-mail address. The published article may have one or more authors (correspondence authors) who are responsible for communications after publication and are marked with an asterisk in the published article. All authors are strongly encouraged to provide an ORCiD iD during submission.

Authors will also be asked to agree to an open-access licence (see §3.7), and will also be asked to confirm that they can pay the open-access fee, or that they have a payment waiver (see §6.5). An author who will be responsible for handling payment will also need to be designated during submission.

During submission authors will be encouraged to provide a tweet about their article for use on publication; twitter handles for departments, institutions etc. will also be requested.

3.2. File format

The source files required for an article are: a single file in WORD, OpenOffice or LaTeX format of the text, tables and figures of the article; a high-resolution graphics file (minimum 600 d.p.i.) in TIFF, PostScript, encapsulated PostScript or PNG format for each figure and scheme; and files of any supporting information. These should be uploaded as described in the online submission instructions.

3.3. Handling of articles

Each article is handled by an editor chosen by the author from a list of those available at the time of submission. Authors should choose an editor whose area of expertise most closely matches the subject of the article. Details of the current Editorial Board can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/editors.html.

All contributions will be seen by referees (normally two) before they can be accepted for publication. The editor to whom the article is assigned is responsible for choosing referees and for accepting or rejecting the article. This responsibility includes decisions on the final form of the article and interpretation of these Notes when necessary. The Co-editor may request revisions to the article (e.g. to the title and abstract) before peer review. Further information on the peer review process can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/peerreview.html.

Changes to an article requested by the Editors, Co-editor or the editorial staff should be received within two months of transmittal to the author, otherwise the submission will be considered as withdrawn. If an article is not acceptable after two revisions it will not be considered further. Any subsequent communication of the material will be treated as a new submission in the editorial process. An article that has been rejected must not be resubmitted to any IUCr journal unless the reasons given for the rejection have been fully addressed in the revised version.

After initial submission, any revised or new files should be uploaded only in response to a specific request from an editor.

On acceptance, the author will also be asked to pay the open-access fee or provide a waiver. For accepted articles, it is the responsibility of the Managing Editor to prepare the article for publication. This may involve correspondence with the authors and/or the responsible editor in order to resolve ambiguities or to obtain satisfactory figures or tables. The date of acceptance that will appear on the published article is the date on which the Managing Editor receives the last item required. Contact details for the Managing Editor of Journal of Synchrotron Radiation can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/services/contactus.html.

Articles may be checked for plagiarism using the Crossref Similarity Check service.

3.4. Transfer of articles

On rare occasions, editors may suggest the transfer of an article to another IUCr Journal, if the article appears to be more suited to the other journal. The transfer process is rapid, as articles can be seamlessly transferred from one journal to another together with the corresponding reviews. The editor of the new journal will often make a decision based on the existing reviews, but will sometimes invite additional reviewers. Note that any change to the journal of publication will only be made after full discussion with the submitting author.

3.5. Author's warranty and ethical considerations

The submission of an article is taken as an implicit guarantee that the work is original, that it is the author(s) own work, that all authors are aware of and concur with the submission, that all workers involved in the study are listed as authors or given proper credit in the acknowledgements, that the article has not already been published (in any language or medium), and that it is not being considered and will not be offered elsewhere while under consideration for an IUCr journal. The inclusion of material in an informal publication, e.g. a preprint server or a newsletter, does not preclude publication in an IUCr journal.

The co-authors of an article should be all those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work reported, including the ideas and their execution, and who share responsibility and accountability for the results. Other contributions should be indicated in the acknowledgements. Changes to the list of authors will normally require the agreement of the editor and all authors.

The IUCr is a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) and endorses its recommendations, including the Code of Conduct for Editors, which are available at https://www.publicationethics.org/. Important considerations related to publication have been given in the ethical guidelines published in Acc. Chem. Res. (2002), 35, 74–76 and Graf et al. [Int. J. Clin. Pract. (2007), 61(Suppl. 152), 1–26]. Authors are expected to comply with these guidelines.

Further details of the ethical policies of IUCr Journals can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/services/ethicalpublishingpolicy.html.

Authors publishing in the journal may be asked to review articles submitted to the journal.

3.6. Author grievance procedure

An author who believes that an article has been unjustifiably treated by the Co-editor may appeal initially to one of the Editors for a new review and, finally, to the Editor-in-chief of IUCr Journals if the author is still aggrieved by the decision. The initial appeal must be made within three months of rejection of the article. The decision of the Editor-in-chief is final.

3.7. Copyright

Authors will not be asked to transfer copyright to the IUCr, but will instead be asked to agree during article submission to an open-access licence. This licence is identical to the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) Licence. Details of author rights can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/services/authorrights.html.

4.1. General information

Articles should be clearly and simply written so that they are accessible to as broad a readership as possible. Before preparing articles, authors should consult a current issue of the journal to make themselves familiar with the general format, such as the use of headings, layout of tables and citation of references. A sample issue is available at https://journals.iucr.org/s/issues/sample/.

The title of the article should be written to appeal to a wide audience and should include key phrases in the subject area. The most effective titles are generally no more than 10–12 words in length. The use of acronyms or abbreviations should be avoided.

All contributions must be accompanied by an English language Abstract and a one or two sentence Synopsis of the main findings of the article for inclusion in the Table of Contents. The Abstract should state as specifically and as quantitatively as possible the principal results obtained, and should provide an indication of the broader significance of the work. Authors should also supply at least five carefully selected keywords. These may include synonyms and specific phrases related to the subject of the article.

The Abstract should be suitable for reproduction by abstracting services without change in wording. For Research Papers, Lead Articles or Feature Articles the Abstract should be around 250 words. For shorter contributions 150 words should suffice. It should make no reference to tables, diagrams, atom numbers or formulae contained in the article. It should not contain footnotes and should not include the use of `we' or `I'.

4.2. Quality of writing

It is important that articles are well written and grammatically correct. If the Co-editor concludes that language problems would place an undue burden on the referees, the article may be returned to the authors without review. Details of language-editing services can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/services/languageservices.html.

4.3. Diagrams and photographs (`figures')

A set of guidelines for preparing figures is available from https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/help/artwork/guide.html. Figures should be prepared using one of the file formats listed in §3.2 and should be included in the article at the point they are first mentioned.

The choice of figures should be optimized to produce the shortest article consistent with clarity. Duplicate presentation of the same information in both figures and tables is to be avoided, as is redundancy with the text. Supplementary figures may be deposited (see §5.2).

4.4. Tables

Authors submitting in Word should use the Word table editor to prepare tables.

4.5. Video and multimedia content

Multimedia content (e.g. time-lapse sequences, three-dimensional structures) is welcomed. The preferred file formats for multimedia are given at https://journals.iucr.org/services/filetypes.html.

4.6. Mathematics and letter symbols

Authors submitting in Word should use the Word equation editor to prepare displayed mathematical equations.

The use of the stop (period) to denote multiplication should be avoided except in scalar products. Generally no sign is required but, when one is, a multiplication sign (×) should be used.

Scalar variables and non-standard functions should appear in italic type.

Vectors should be in bold type and tensors should be in bold-italic type.

Greek letters should not be spelled out.

Care should be taken not to cause confusion by using the same letter symbol in two different meanings.

Gothic, script or other unusual lettering should be avoided. Another typeface may be substituted if that used by the author is not readily available.

All displayed equations, including those in published Appendices, should be numbered in a single series.

4.7. Nomenclature

4.8. Funding information

Articles may include a Funding information section. This section aims to help authors comply with the reporting requirements of funders, and includes information on funders and grant/award numbers. Funding information should not be included in the Acknowledgements section. For more information, see https://journals.iucr.org/services/funding.html.

4.9. References

References to published work must be indicated by giving the authors' names followed immediately by the year of publication, e.g. Neder & Schulz (1998) or (Neder & Schulz, 1998). Where there are three or more authors the reference in the text should be indicated in the form Smith et al. (1998) or (Smith et al., 1998) etc.

The reference list should be arranged alphabetically and conform with the following style:

Andrews, M., Wright, H. & Clarke, S. A. (2020). In preparation.

Brünger, A. T. (1992a). X-PLOR. Version 3.1. A System for X-ray Crystallography and NMR. Yale University, Connecticut, USA.

Brünger, A. T. (1992b). Nature (London), 355, 472–474.

Cowley, J. M. (1993). Editor. Electron Diffraction Techniques. Oxford University Press.

Crowther, R. A. (1972). The Molecular Replacement Method, edited by M. G. Rossmann, pp. 173–178. New York: Gordon and Breach.

International Union of Crystallography (2008). (IUCr) Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications, https://journals.iucr.org/f/journalhomepage.html.

Samadi, N., Shi, X. & Chapman, D. (2019). J. Synchrotron Rad. 26, https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600577519010658.

Sheldrick, G. (2008). Acta Cryst. A64. 112–122.

Wall, M. E. (2015). arXiv:1511.07811.

Yariv, J. (1983). Personal communication.

Zhou, P. F. (1993). PhD thesis, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Note that all authors and inclusive page numbers must be given.

Identification of individual structures in the article by use of database reference (identification) codes should be accompanied by a full citation of the original literature in the reference list.

Citations in supporting information should appear in the main body of the article or be given in a related literature section.

5.1. Purpose and scope

Supporting information (such as experimental data, additional figures and multimedia content) that may be of use or interest to some readers but does not form part of the article itself will be made available from the journal web site. Arrangements have also been made for such information to be deposited, where appropriate, with relevant databases. In some cases, e.g. large raw data sets, the journal might not host the data but will provide links if DOIs are available for the data.

5.2. Format of supporting information

All material for deposition with IUCr Journals should be supplied in one of the formats described at https://journals.iucr.org/services/filetypes.html. Structural information (for small-molecule structures) should be supplied in CIF format.

5.3. Macromolecular structures

Authors should follow the deposition recommendations of the IUCr Commission on Biological Macromolecules [Acta Cryst. (2000), D56, 2]. For all structural studies of macromolecules, coordinates and the related experimental data (structure-factor amplitudes/intensities and/or NMR restraints) must be deposited at a member site of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB; https://www.wwpdb.org) if a total molecular structure has been reported. Authors must deposit their data with the wwPDB in advance of submission to the journal, and provide the wwPDB reference code(s) and corresponding validation report(s) upon submission. The data must be released upon publication. EM maps must be deposited in The Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB; https://emdb-empiar.org) at a wwPDB member site.

For articles describing a new structure or a new method tested on unpublished data, authors are recommended to make arrangements for their original raw diffraction data to be archived in a repository that assigns a doi to the data. The assigned doi should be provided during the submission process and a link from the article to the data will be made upon publication.

Additionally, authors may be asked to make their data available to the referees during the review process.

5.4. Powder diffraction data

Authors of powder diffraction articles should consult the notes provided at https://journals.iucr.org/services/cif/powder.html. For articles that present the results of powder diffraction profile fitting or refinement (Rietveld) methods, the primary diffraction data, i.e. the numerical intensity of each measured point on the profile as a function of scattering angle, should be deposited.

5.5. XAFS data

For articles that present XAFS data of an unknown system, the deposition of primary χ(k) data is recommended.

5.6. SAXS data

For articles that present experimental one-dimensional SAXS data, the deposition of an ASCII file representing the background-corrected scattering profile(s) with errors is recommended.

6.1. Author tools

A number of tools are available to help with the preparation of articles.

Word, OpenOffice and LaTeX templates can be downloaded from the author services page.

Table tools within the Word template may be used to prepare experimental tables from an mmCIF file.

The web service, publBio, is available at https://publbio.iucr.org for preparing the text, experimental tables and enhanced figures for structural articles, and ensures that an article contains all the items necessary for publication.

6.2. Status information

Authors may obtain information about the current status of their articles at https://journals.iucr.org/services/status.html.

6.3. Proofs

Proofs will be provided in portable document format (pdf). The submitting author will be notified by e-mail when the proofs are ready for downloading.

6.4. Reprints

After publication, the submitting author will be able to download the electronic reprint of the published article, free of charge. Authors will also be able to order printed reprints at the proof stage.

6.5. Open access

Journal of Synchrotron Radiation is an open-access journal. The costs of peer review, of journal production, and of online hosting and archiving are met by charging an open-access fee to authors.

Authors will be asked to pay an open-access fee upon acceptance of their article for publication. Authors from developing countries may apply for their open-access fees to be waived. Waiver requests must be made before submission of an article to the journal.

Full details of the open-access arrangements for Journal of Synchrotron Radiation are available at https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/openaccess.html.

6.6. Publicizing your article

There are many ways in which the IUCr promotes and raises awareness of articles published in its journals. More information on this and suggestions on how to publicize your articles can be found at https://journals.iucr.org/s/services/articlepublicity.html.

6.7. Crystallography Journals Online

All IUCr journals are available on the web via Crystallography Journals Online at https://journals.iucr.org/.